Disputed Victories

CELEBRATING DELIVERANCE. Rehobothers celebrating victory at Sam Khubis with traditional 'lang-arm' dance.  But should Namibia's president be welcome?

YESTERDAY'S commemorations of VE Day - victory seventy years ago - were overshadowed in Moscow by concern that the huge display of hardware might not be the way to de-escalate conflict over the Ukraine; and in London by realisation that the Tories may interpret their election victory as mandate to proceed with wrecking every social advance since 1945, from the National Health Service to the European Court of Human Rights.

The defeat of Hitler's Germany in 1945 is not the only victory celebrated on May 8. In Namibia, south-west Africa, the Rehoboth Baster people particularly commemorate the Battle of Sam Khubis, a hundred years ago on May 8, 1915, a couple of weeks after the Gallipoli landings in faraway Turkey which gave rise to ANZAC day, and part of the same world conflict.
 

The Basters, mostly descendants of white Europeans and native African women, had adopted a way of life like that of white settlers and taken up their Calvinist christian religion, but in an increasingly racist and discriminatory South Africa their chances of integration, or independent development with their own farms etc, were denied. So in 1868 they left their original home in the Cape Colony, and trekked northwards in search of land.

Settling in Rehoboth, given its Biblical name by German missionaries, in what is now central Namibia, they set up the Free Republic of Rehoboth, with its own flag and constitution, in 1872. 
During the German annexation of South West Africa, the Baster Kaptein Hermanus van Wyk signed a 'Treaty of Protection and Friendship' with the German Empire on 11 October 1884. This permitted some autonomy to the Basters, but at the expense of recognising German colonial rule and under a National Service agreement in 1895, providing soldiers whom the German forces were able to use against other African peoples.

In 1904 it was Basters like Hendrik Campbell from Rehoboth, compelled to take part in the war against Herero rebels, who reported how German troops were killing prisoners and destroying villages, in what turned from a war of repression to one of deliberate extermination.

The Rehobothers' loyalty and willingness to get along with German settlers did not spare them from increasing discrimination and racism. Indeed, just as the German colonialists' treatment of the Nama and Herero peoples can be seen as the first acts of 20th century genocide, so much of the racist laws and ideology which the Nazis would apply in Europe can be traced to legislation and ideas adopted to enforce white rule and racial 'purity' in South West Africa.

 In 1914, seeing no reason to get caught up in the war between imperial masters, or go down with the German colonial Schutztruppe facing superior South African forces, the Rehoboth Baster leaders attempted to negotiate neutrality for their people. The Baster Council disapproved recruitment of a mounted unit by the Germans, and Basters ordered to guard prisoners of war preferred defecting. Shooting incidents occurred between Germans and Basters.   

Treating the Basters' position as armed revolt, Governor Theodor Seitz cancelled the protection treaty with them and ordered his forces to attack Rehoboth. German forces killed civilians, and chased after refugees who had made for the mountain of Sam Khubis.  There on the mountainside, fifty miles south east of Rehoboth, about 700 Basters - men, women and children - set up camp, and prepared to resist attack.   On May 8, 1915 the Germans attacked this last entrenchment, but despite repeated attempts and superior weaponry, they could not destroy the Basters' position.

By nightfall, the Basters were running out of ammunition, and believing they faced defeat, they prayed.
   God van ons vaderen / sterke en machtige God / heilig is Uw naam op die ganse aarde / Uw die de hemelen geschapen heft / neigt Uw oor tot ons / luister na die smekingen van Uwe kinderen / de dood staart ons in het gesicht / die kinderen der bose zoeken onze levens / Red ons uit die hand van onze vijanden / en beskermt onze vrouen en kinderen / En dit zult vier ons en onze nacheschlacht zijn een dag als een Zondag / waarop wij Uw naam prijzen en Uw goedertierenheid tot in euwigheid niet vergeten

    God our father / strong and powerful / holy be Thy name all over the earth / Thou that made heaven / bow Thou down to us / listen to the cries of Thy children / death stares us in the face / the children of evil seek our lives / Save us from the hand of our enemies / and protect our wives and children / and this shall be for us and our kin a day like a Sunday / on which we shall praise Thy name / and Thy gratitude shall not be forgotten in eternity

Next morning it seemed this last plea to the Almighty had worked. The Germans had retreated and the Rehobother Basters were spared. It turned out that advancing South African troops from Walvis Bay were threatening to cut off a Schutztruppe contingent near Windhoek, so the troops attacking Sam Khubis were ordered to pull back and take the train the following morning to join their main force.

South-West Africa was occupied by South African forces in 1915, but General Botha rebuffed Baster offers to join them, saying the war with Germany was not the concern of coloureds. After the war the Basters applied to become a British Protectorate, like Basutoland, but the South Africans were able to block this. Taking over South-West Africa under a League of Nations mandate, they made no concession to Baster aspirations, even taking away those rights they had been granted under the Germans.

Ten years later a rebellion broke out at Rehoboth, but it was suppressed by colonial forces, armed with machine guns and supported by two aircraft. They marched into the town and arrested more than 600 people.

In 1963, after repeated petitions to the United Nations to end Apartheid South African rule, a group of Namibians fled to Botswana, from where they planned to recruit and organise for the armed struggle led by the South West Africa People's Organisation, SWAPO.  Among the four was a political campaigner from Rehoboth, Hermanus Christoffel Beukes (also known as Oom Maans Beukes), born in 1913 under German rule. Kidnapped by South African agents, the four were then released under international pressure.

The UN decided to take responsibility for South West Africa, and in 1973 it recognised SWAPO as the legitimate representative of the Namibian people. But it was not until after a prolonged armed struggle and the war in neighbouring Angola that the South Africans withdrew, and Namibia obtained independence in 1990. But this was no unblemished victory. Critics, including veterans of the armed struggle and descendents of the country's first freedom fighters, say SWAPO failed to live up to the promise of uniting all Namibians in the struggle, that corrupt leaders held back supplies that were desperately needed by the fighters, and that SWAPO's security organs meted out repression, torture and murder to dissidents within its ranks as well as rivals.

Some of this information was documented and brought to the outside world by survivors, though some Guardian journalists, liberals, "solidarity" professionals and Stalinists, not wanting to spoil their celebration of the new regime, preferred not to listen.


Though SWAPO under Sam Nujoma formed Namibia's first government and remains the dominant party, it faces a left-wing opposition drawn from former fighters and the nascent workers' movement.  From this background came the following letter to the President, as preparations were under way to commemorate the centenary of the Rehobothers' victory at Sam Khubis:
     
27 April 2015

Dr Hage Geingob
The President
The Republic of Namibia
Windhoek

BY HAND

Mr President,

RE: Your attendance of the 100th Commemoration of ‪#‎Khubis‬

We are submitting this letter to you in addition to the letters from members of the Rehoboth Community and our party, the Workers Revolutionary Party. We do so due to the particularly direct personal and intimate interest we have in this matter to which impersonal and general political statements cannot give expression.

Nevertheless, we are submitting this letter for the historic record.

Hewat is a grandson of Johannes Timotheus Beukes, who was the commander of the forces at #Khubis which defeated the German army on 8 May 1915 and saved the Rehoboth Baster Nation from extermination. He is the brother of the Late Martha Ford, who was a Politbureau member of SWAPO in exile. Prior to that, she was a National Executive member of the SWAPO within the country. He is the uncle of the Late Winston Ford the son of Martha Ford and he is the cousin of the Late Priscilla van Wyk, who fled into exile in 1978.

Erica is the sister of the Late Walter Thiro, who fled into exile in January 1979.

In 1989 Hewat and Erica were informed by returning members of SWAPO who were imprisoned in holes in Lubango, Angola that Erica’s brother Walter had died in these holes after having been slandered, tortured and imprisoned. His body was disposed of in an unknown manner. They were also informed that Priscilla van Wyk who had fled Namibia to escape arrest was used after her arrival in Zambia as a slave and personal attendant by Pendukeni Emvula-Iiitana – the present Home Affairs minister.

It was reported in 1984 that Priscilla suffered distortion of her face due to extreme anxiety and constant fear. Priscilla later died in the USA after her escape from Zambia.

In 1996, Hewat travelled to Angola to attempt to convince Martha Ford to return to Namibia. The family was under the impression that she refused to leave Angola due to her son’s death in 1978. However, upon his meeting with Martha the full truth started to emerge. Martha had left Namibia in 1978 to Angola with her two children, Shireen and Winston. She was quickly disillusioned by the SWAPO leadership’s sexual abuse of young girls and traitorous politics. She expressed her criticism openly. During about October 1978 the SWAPO leadership shot and killed Winston Ford, then 10 years of age, as reprisal, she told Hewat.

She further unfolded the circumstances of his death: Winston remained in a SWAPO camp in southern Angola. The SWAPO leaders first had him dropped–off in a remote wilderness where it was assumed he would be killed by wild animals or he would succumb without water and food. He made it back to the camp however where he was later shot. When Martha came back to bury her son, the officials refused her to inspect his body. She was secretly informed by women that he was shot.

After she left SWAPO as a member, the SWAPO leadership conspired with the MPLA including the poet Lusio Lara to confine her to Angola. It became clear to Hewat after listening to Martha that she stood in danger of being killed should she make a serious attempt to leave Angola. She lived in squalor. Hewat abandoned his attempts to get her out of Angola and returned to Namibia to ask the family to support her materially.

Her health deteriorated until she was a shadow of her former self. Only then did the Angolan regime allowed her to leave. She died in Namibia due to years of neglect.

The SWAPO leadership in particular yourself, Mr President, refuse to account for the whereabouts of the remains of Winston Ford and Walter Thiro amongst others.

You now stand invited by a group in Rehoboth to attend the 100th Commemoration of the Battle of #Khubis. This group of people are mostly not descendant from fighters of #Khubis. They have been tied to the homeland policy of the South African regime which turned Rehoboth into a Bantustan despite its rejection by the Community. They are ‘kulaks’ – rich peasants – who seek the total privatisation of the Rehoboth Community’s collectively-owned land. They have reportedly travelled to China this year to acquire funds on the strength of your government to erect a lodge on the site of the Battle. They have allotted this land in 1992 to themselves through their connection to the former Bantustan and their newfound connection to the SWAPO regime. This group consists of farmers who use the most horrific racist methods of deprivation and humiliation against Ovambo contract labourers, Namas, Damaras and Basters.

To us it is no surprise that your regime is in a good relationship with this group or class of persons.
We note that they have even shifted the Commemoration to 6th of May to accommodate you!!!
In your State of the Nation address you amongst others relegated the national languages of this country to alien languages with English – a foreign language - the official language. You put the obligation on people to create their own facilities to be able to speak their languages. This has completed your policy of expropriation of Namibians.

Given your policy of Total Expropriation of Namibians both materially and spiritually and your crimes against us as a family we demand that you stay away from our most sacred moment, the 100th Commemoration of our salvation from German extermination.

In conclusion,
The fact that your leadership is guilty of crimes against the Beukes and the Thiro families and in particular that you have done absolutely nothing to resolve outstanding issues such as the return of our peoples’ remains make it unacceptable for you to attend our Commemoration.
As a member of the SWAPO Politbureau you were co-responsible for all the above.

Do not attend!

Hewat and Erica Beukes
On behalf of the Beukes and Thiro families.

ERICA and HEWAT BEUKES at meeting in Kilburn twenty years ago. 

Mandela's enemies, and his legacy

HOW considerate of Nelson Mandela to the end, to time his departure so that David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and John Major can escape the British winter to attend his funeral. I won't join the vulgar types expressing unpleasant wishes for their journey or return, it is not nice, and besides the immediate replacements would be just as bad, or worse.

Nor will I dwell overlong on the hypocrisy of some of those paying tribute to the African leader (and incidentally I see Israeli premier Netanyahu is not going,blaming the cost of security, though probably fearing hostile protests, besides which he must regret the precedent set by South Africa's white rulers in freeing Mandela let alone letting him take their place peacefully. Aging President Shimon Peres has been diagnosed with a convenient dose of 'flu and advised not to travel, so memories will not be stirred of his role in for instance Israeli nuclear co-operation with the Apartheid regime.)


 Here in Britain, like lots of people, I remember the way demonstrators demanding the release of Nelson Mandela and other Apartheid prisoners were harassed by police outside South Africa House; the use of British-made Alvis Saladin armoured vehicles in killing and repressing Africans at Sharpeville and Soweto; and the jolly "Hang Nelson Mandela!" tee shirts adopted by young British Tories.

The tee shirts were particularly associated with the Federation of Conservative Students(FCS), dubbed "Maggie's Militant Tendency" in a BBC Panorama programme that was sued for libel and disowned by the BBC under Tory pressure. Later, in 1986, Norman Tebbit disbanded the FCS, not because of their nasty tee shirts about Mandela but for an article attacking Harold Macmillan. Harry Phibbs who wrote the article went on to join the Evening Standard as a columnist, and is today a leading Tory councillor in Hammersmith. House of Commons Speaker John Bercow MP has regretted the right-wing views he associated with in the FCS.

Former MP Terry Dicks however, now a member of Runnymede district council in Surrey,stands by his denunciation of Nelson Mandela as a "black terrorist" who had, what's more, insulted Margaret Thatcher by declining to see her on his 1990 trip to Britain. Fortunately the electors of Hayes and Harlington are no longer saddled with Terry Dicks as their MP, his place having been taken by left-wing Labourite John McDonnell MP. That's as far a swing from right to left as you could get in British parliamentary politics!

Although the Tory students acquired a reputation for racially abusing bar staff during their boozy beanos, and one since prominent as a blogger has been upset by revelations of his attempts to woo the BNP, they were not strictly dogmatic in their racialist alignments. A black leader like Jonas Savimbi could be their hero, since his Unita movement in Angola was an ally to the South African regime.

Even after the big vested interests that run South Africa had decided to dump Apartheid, and the process which made Mandela president was under way, some Tories in Britain, and perhaps some elements in the secret state, were ready to back anyone, black(Buthelezi) or white(Clive Derby-Lewis) who might seem able to stop what now seems inevitable from taking place. Derby-Lewis, who visited London and became vice-president of the right-wing Western Goals network, is serving time in South Africa for hs part in the assassination of South African Communist party leader Chris Hani  Maybe one day the whole story will be told.

On the left, reactions to Mandela's death have ranged from those, not all of the same persuasion, who have spoken only of the ANC leaders; greatness to some who see only the 'sell out' of a potential socialist revolution for Stalinist "stages theory". Many refer more concretely to the way in which miner's union leader and ANC vice president Cyril Ramaphosa became a multi-millionaire mine owner, while miners were left in poverty and squalor alongside the immense wealth they extract, and striking platinum miners shot down by police at the Marekana mine.

It  is a far cry from the day soon after Apartheid fell, when thousands gathered for a triumphal rally with MPs and churchmen in Hyde Park, and I stood outside selling, or trying to sell, my Workers Press, with its front-page reporting South African police using dogs to attack striking shopworkers, and faced the hostile glares of those for whom the workers should be grateful for their freedom and the new South African regime, ven with the same old South African police, could do no wrong.

That was nothing to the hostility, or at best cold indifference, faced by comrades - former freedom fighters, ex-prisoners, active trade unionists who'd defied death threats -who came here from Namibia or South Africa to seek support for their struggles and warn against trusting the new regimes.     

But things have changed.

Here, introducing his autobiography, Armed and Dangerous, is Ronnie Kasrils, a leading member of both the ANC and the Communist Party, who became a minister in Mandela's government. Kasrils, who says the 1960 Sharpeville massacre led him to join the ANC, was shocked by the killing of 34 workers at the Marekana mine into looking at where they had gone wrong:

South Africa's liberation struggle reached a high point but not its zenith when we overcame apartheid rule. Back then, our hopes were high for our country given its modern industrial economy, strategic mineral resources (not only gold and diamonds), and a working class and organised trade union movement with a rich tradition of struggle. But that optimism overlooked the tenacity of the international capitalist system. From 1991 to 1996 the battle for the ANC's soul got under way, and was eventually lost to corporate power: we were entrapped by the neoliberal economy – or, as some today cry out, we "sold our people down the river".

What I call our Faustian moment came when we took an IMF loan on the eve of our first democratic election. That loan, with strings attached that precluded a radical economic agenda, was considered a necessary evil, as were concessions to keep negotiations on track and take delivery of the promised land for our people. Doubt had come to reign supreme: we believed, wrongly, there was no other option; that we had to be cautious, since by 1991 our once powerful ally, the Soviet union, bankrupted by the arms race, had collapsed. Inexcusably, we had lost faith in the ability of our own revolutionary masses to overcome all obstacles. Whatever the threats to isolate a radicalising South Africa, the world could not have done without our vast reserves of minerals.

To lose our nerve was not necessary or inevitable. The ANC leadership needed to remain determined, united and free of corruption – and, above all, to hold on to its revolutionary will. Instead, we chickened out. The ANC leadership needed to remain true to its commitment of serving the people. This would have given it the hegemony it required not only over the entrenched capitalist class but over emergent elitists, many of whom would seek wealth through black economic empowerment, corrupt practices and selling political influence.

To break apartheid rule through negotiation, rather than a bloody civil war, seemed then an option too good to be ignored. However, at that time, the balance of power was with the ANC, and conditions were favourable for more radical change at the negotiating table than we ultimately accepted. It is by no means certain that the old order, apart from isolated rightist extremists, had the will or capability to resort to the bloody repression envisaged by Mandela's leadership. If we had held our nerve, we could have pressed forward without making the concessions we did.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/24/anc-faustian-pact-mandela-fatal-error

PS   SOMETHING I'd just like to add from the days when Mandela was a fugitive fighter for freedom, but some recognised him early as a great man.
Back in 1962 Nelson Mandela spent 11 days in June in London before returning to South Africa and almost certain arrest. The then secretary of Willesden trades council, Tom Durkin, thought it would be a pity not to take advantage of the African leader's visit, and invited Mandela to address the trades council. It was probably the last public meeting Mandela did before he was locked up by the Apartheid regime.
Unfortunately the NW London trades unionists were not the only people interested in Mandela. We now know that the CIA helped the South African authorities lift Mandela after his return to the country.
Willesden and Wembley merged to form Brent Trades Union Council, better known for backing the Grunwick strikers, but we are just as proud of our predecessor's initiative in holding that historic meeting with Mandela, just another example of the important function trades union councils can play. Think globally, act locally -and make sure your branch affiliates to the local trades union council!

When Mandela Came to Willesden

IT has been said that when great revolutionaries  and fighters for the oppressed die they are turned into harmless ikons, the better to dupe the masses, by those who hated everything they stood for when alive. In the cae of Nelson Mandela, the hypocritical beatification has happened while he was still alive, and though we might discuss the reasons another time, we can see that with the 94-year old ex-president's life possibly near an end, only Nazi Nick Griffin thought his likely death a laughing matter,

Mandela was admitted to hospital with a chronic lung infection, contracted during his 27 years in an Apartheid prison cell. It was while he was held, and people campaigned for his release, that Margaret Thatcher condemned him as a "terrorist", and Tory students sported "Hang Nelson Mandela" tee shirts.

Even after his release, to commence the largely peaceful transition for which those with South African interests must feel genuinely grateful, Tories were reluctant to greet his success or relax their hostility and prejudice. The traces of British ssupport to Inkatha and even to diehard South African white racists may never be uncovered, but more open Tory attitudes have been remembered.

This week, as admirers held their breath,  the London Borough of Brent awarded the freedom of the borough to Mandela. It may be a bit late for him to come and enjoy it, but as a letter in the Guardian explains, there are reasons why it was belated.

The Brent Labour group first recommended the freedom of Brent for Nelson Mandela in April 1990, after he came to a concert at Wembley following his release from prison (Diary, 26 June). This was to thank UK and Brent campaigners for his release. Unfortunately, their recommendation to confer the honour was frustrated by the abstention of the Tory group and so failure to achieve the required majority. Our attempt to go ahead anyway was prevented by a high court injunction by the then Tory leaders, with costs of £10,000 levied against the Labour leader and mayor. It is an indication of how opinion in Britain has changed towards Mandela that all Tory councillors voted with us this time in a unanimous vote. Some weeks ago, when we were moving office, we found the original 1990 "Welcome Mandela" plaque. This was presented to the high commission of South Africa on Monday, who have agreed it will be displayed permanently in our new civic centre in Wembley.
Cllr Jim Moher
Executive council, London borough of Brent

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/26/nelson-mandela-and-brent 

Mandela came to Wembley in 1990, but that was not the first time he had spoken in the North-West London borough.

In 1962 Nelson Mandela came briefly to London for 11 days in June (whilst having gone “underground" following the treason trial) before returning to South Africa where he was soon arrested and imprisoned.
Whilst in London well known trades council activist Tom Durkin arranged for Mandela to address the Willesden Trades Council and was immensely proud Willesden Trades Council (now part of Brent) had hosted his last political meeting outside South Africa. In his autobiography Mandela wrote "In London I resumed my old underground ways, not wanting word to leak back to South Africa that I was there. But I was not a recluse; my ten days there were divided between ANC business, seeing old friends and occasional jaunts as a conventional tourist."  On Friday, June 8 he met senior ANC members in exile, Yusuf Dadoo and Vela Pillay, and the following Sunday he met Milton Obote, the Prime Minister of Uganda. Then meetings with David Astor, the editor of The Observer, Hugh Gaitskell, leader of the Labour Party, and Joe Grimmond, leader of the Liberal Party.

(150 Years of Union Struggle, A Celebration of the Trades Council Movement in London, published by Greater London Association of Trades Union Councils).


On Brent Trades Union Council, which succeeded the old Willesden and Wembley TUCs when the two London boroughs were merged, we are naturally proud of the tradition established by our predecessors, and will be seeking out memories and reports of that 1962 meeting.

Meanwhile the trades council remains engaged in the current struggle against racism,. This  evening at 6pm supporters,  including witnesses of a brutal racist attack which happened last week near where we meet, will be going to Wembley police station to raise concern as to whether this incident is being propeerly investigated. 


Community protest as Police lose CCTV evidence of unprovoked racist attack in Willesden  
Please note this is at 6pm and not as stated in this report.

Has African ghost come back to haunt Vauxhall Cross?

DELIVERED trussed up to his enemies. But who arranged Patrice Lumumba's death?
 

HAS the ghost of Congo's first elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, murdered in 1961, and revered ever since as a victim of imperialist intrigue and ikon of African aspirations for freedom, come back to haunt the headquarters of British intelligence, MI6, at Vauxhall Cross in London?

Lumumba was ousted by the CIA-backed Colonel Joseph Mobutu, having failed to subdue the breakaway mineral-rich Katanga province, and called in UN troops to restore order. The UN forces went everywhere except Katanga, and it was there that having been handed over to his enemies, the Congolese leader was killed by officers from his country's former colonial masters, the Belgians.

In 1975 the US Senate's  Church Committee looking into CIA operations went on record with the finding that spychief Allen Dulles had ordered Lumumba's assassination as "an urgent and prime objective". Declassified  CIA cables mention two specific CIA plots to murder Lumumba: the poison plot and a shooting plot. Although some sources claim that CIA plots ended when Lumumba was captured, records show that removing him remained a US objective. A CIA officer told another that he had disposed of the body.


A Belgian Commission investigating Lumumba's assassination denied that Belgium had ordered it but admitted culpability for failing to prevent it taking place.  In February 2002, the Belgian government apologised to the Congolese people, and admitted to a "moral responsibility" and "an irrefutable portion of responsibility in the events that led to the death of Lumumba".

Now a historian, Calder Walton, whose book Empire of Secrets has prompted claims of British involvment in the affair has urged MI6 to declassify its secret files on Lumumba.

It was after Walton's book was reviewed in the London Review of Books last month that Labour Life peer Lord Lea of Crondall wrote to the LRB to say that he had been told Lumumba was killed with the help of MI6.  He claimed he was told this by the late Baroness Park of Monmouth, who at the time of Lumumba’s death headed the Leopoldville station of MI6.

In his book, Walton, who until 2009 served as research assistant for Professor Christopher Andrew’s authorized official history of MI5, Defence of the Realm, says it is unclear who organized Lumumba’s assassination. He argues that “at present, we do not know [...] whether British plots to assassinate Lumumba [...] ever amounted to anything”. But speaking to The London Times on Wednesday, the historian and author urged MI6 to declassify its internal archives on the Congolese leader. He told the paper that MI6 must be placed “in the position it deserves in the history of anti-colonial movements in Africa and elsewhere”, but that could only be done if MI6 “releases records from its own archives”.


According to Lord Lea, what he was told by Baroness Park was that MI6 was worried that Lumumba might bring the Congo, with its important uranium deposits among other minerals, under Soviet influence. According to US records, Eisenhower was persuaded that Lumumba was a "communist".
If that was down to MI6 it would not be the first, or last, time, that the British intelligence establishment had worked up a "Red scare" to try and affect US policy.

Congolese uranium was important to the United States for military as well as economic reasons. But there were British interests in the Congo, and more specifically, Katanga's other minerals. In fact the British combine TANKS, originating around Tanganyika Ceoncessions Ltd., was a major holder in Union Miniere, the Belgian company which continued to own and run Katanga until it was taken over by Mobutu.

Lumumba was forcibly restrained on the flight to Elizabethville (now Lubumbashi) on 17 January 1961.[21] On arrival, he was conducted under arrest to Brouwez House where he was brutally beaten and tortured by Katangan and Belgian officers,[22] while President Tshombe and his cabinet decided what to do with him.[23][24][25]
Death by firing squad

Later that night, Lumumba was driven to an isolated spot where three firing squads had been assembled. According to David Akerman, Ludo de Witte and Kris Hollington,[26] the firing squads were commanded by a Belgian, Captain Julien Gat; another Belgian, Police Commissioner Verscheure, had overall command of the execution site.[27] The Belgian Commission has found that the execution was carried out by Katanga's authorities, but de Witte found written orders from the Belgian government requesting Lumumba's execution and documents on various arrangements, such as death squads. It reported that President Tshombe and two other ministers were present with four Belgian officers under the command of Katangan authorities. Lumumba and two ministers from his newly formed independent government (and who had also been tortured), Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito, were lined up against a tree and shot one at a time. The execution probably took place on 17 January 1961 between 21:40 and 21:43 according to the Belgian report. According to Adam Hochschild, author of a book on the Congo rubber terror, Lumumba's body was disposed of in an unmarked grave by a CIA agent.[28]

No statement was released until three weeks later despite rumours that Lumumba was dead.

Later that year it was the turn of UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold to die,  while on a flight to Katanga. His plane came down near Ndala, in Zambia, on September 18, 1961. Reports of a bright flash in the sky before the crash led to a UN investigation. There were rumours and accusations of a conspiracy. It is possible that new evidence about the murder of Patrice Lumumba might lead to reopening the case of Dag Hammarskjold's death.

But we are consistently reassured that British intelligence services, MI5 and MI6 do not engage in such things. And who are we to question the word of British officers, ladies and gentlemen?

Congo remains the prey of competing mineral interests, with proxy wars and child slavery used to take out the 'rare earths' valued by the electronics industry,  along the border with Rwanda, now a member of the British Commonwealth.

"MI6 link to Lumumba assassination"

Historian calls on MI6 to declassify files

How the UN fronted for imperialist conspiracy against Lumumba

Union Miniere

Patrice Lumumba


Dag Hammarskjold

How Shall the Meek Inherit the Rare Earth?

THE British government has anninced it is suspending aid to Rwanda because of the African state's involvment in supporting M23 rebels in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of  Congo, but critics are asking what took them so long to recognise what everyone knew, and whether this is too little too late.

Rwanda, a former Belgian colony, applied to join the British Commonwealth in 2008, and was admitted in 2010. President Paul Kagame's move was seen as a break out of the Francophone sphere, after blaming France for complicity in the 1994 genocide which ended when his rebel army took control of the country.

Though the British government welcomed the new member to the club, and the Rwandan government boasted of the economic progress they had made and hoped to make, human rights experts raised doubts about the Rwandan government's record.Professor Yashpal Ghai, a Kenyan legal expert, argued that freedom of speech had been widely suppressed, the judiciary has "serious weaknesses" and political freedom is curtailed."We believe that overwhelming evidence, conveniently ignored by leading Commonwealth states, demonstrates that the government of Rwanda is not sufficiently committed to the protection of human rights and to democracy," he wrote in a report for the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative.

But it is Rwanda's interference in the Congo, and that of another Commonwealth country, Uganda, that has roused wider concern. They invaded twice, in 1996 and 1998, and in 2000 fought a "six day war"between them on Congolese soil, resulting in many civilian deaths, though the object was to lay hands on diamonds in Kisangani province, north-eastern Congo.

In late March this year a rebellion broke out among Rwandan troops in the Congolese army who complained that an agreement on March 23, 2009 to integrate them into the army had not been fully implemented. This was the start of the M23 force. A prominent figure in it is Bosco Ntaganda, a Tutsi Rwandan warlord turned Congolese army general, who just happens to be wanted on an International Criminal Court for war crimes.
(Liberation magazine, November 2012, article by Victoria Dove Dimandja)
        
There are rich prizes to be got in the poor and war-ravaged Congo - gold, diamonds, and oil, but above all, in eastern Congo, a less familiar explanation for war and rivalry - the rare eath metals. Not as esoteric as they sound, but essential to many of the hi-tech products that have become part of life today.

As a blogger calling themself "DINGO" put it dramatically two years ago:  
DINGO on Thu Nov 18, 2010  "Could anyone imagine that cell phones are tainted with the blood of 3.2 million deaths since 1998? Also, that the same thing happens with some children's video games? And that mega-technologies contribute to forest depredation and spoliation of the rich natural resources of paradoxically impoverished peoples?

In the case of these new high techs, it is Coltan that is at stake --the minerals columbium and tantalite, or Coltan for short. Tantalite is a rare, hard and dense metal, very resistant to corrosion and high temperatures and is an excellent electricity and heat conductor. It is used in the microchips of cell phone batteries to prolong duration of the charge, making this business flourish. Provisions for 2004 foresee sales of 1,000 million units. To these properties are added that its extraction does not entail heavy costs --it is obtained by digging in the mud-- and that it is easily sold, enabling the companies involved in the business to obtain juicy dividends.

Even though Coltan is extracted in Brazil, Thailand and much of it from Australia --the prime producer of Coltan on a world level-- it is in Africa where 80% of the world reserves are to be found. Within this continent, the Democratic Republic of Congo concentrates over 80% of the deposits, where 10,000 miners toil daily in the province of Kivu (eastern Congo), a territory that has been occupied since 1998 by the armies of Rwanda and Uganda. A series of companies has been set up in the zone, associated to large transnational capital, local governments and military forces (both state and "guerrilla") in a dispute over the control of the region for the extraction of Coltan and other minerals. The United Nations has not hesitated to state that this strategic mineral is funding a war that the former United States Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright called "the first African world war" (and we understand by world wars, those in which the great powers share out the world), and is one of its causes.

In August 1998, the Congolese Union for Democracy (Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie-RCD), launched a rebellion in the city of Goma, supported by the Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA). Since then, in a struggle in which, behind the myth of ethnic rivalries, are hidden the old colonial powers that continue to ransack the wealth of post-Colonial Africa, the war has been rife between two, loosely defined parties. On the one hand the RDC and the Governments of Rwanda and Uganda, supported by the United States, relying on the military bases such as that built in Rwanda by the United States company Brown&Root, a branch of Halliburton, where Rwandese forces are trained and logistic support is provided to their troops in the DRC, together with United States combat helicopters and spy satellites. The other party is made up of the Democratic Republic of Congo (led by one of Kabila's sons, after his father was assassinated by the Rwandese), Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe.

However, behind these states are the companies sharing out the zone. Various joint companies have been set up for this purpose, the most important one being SOMIGL (the Great Lakes Mining Company), a joint company set up in November 2000, involving Africom, Premeco, Cogecom and Cogear, (the latter two are Belgium companies --it should be remembered that DRC, formerly the Belgium Congo, was a Belgium colony), Masingiro GmbH (a German company) and various other companies that ceased their activities in January 2002 for various reasons (a drop in Coltan prices, difficult working conditions, suspension of Coltan imports from DRC) and are waiting for better conditions: Sogem (a Belgian company), Cabot and Kemet (U.S.) the joint United States-German company Eagles Wings Resources (now with headquarters in Rwanda), among others.

The transport companies belong to close family members of the presidents of Rwanda and Uganda. In these virtually military zones, private air companies bring in arms and take out minerals. Most of the Coltan extracted is later refined by a small number of companies in Germany, the United States, Kazakhstan and the Far East. The branch of Bayer, Starck produces 50% of powdered tantalite on a world level. Dozens of companies are linked to the traffic and elaboration of this product, with participation of the major monopolizing companies in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States. As if this were not enough, the Trade, Development and Industry Bank, created in 1996 with headquarters in the capital city of Rwanda, Kigali, acts as correspondent for the CITIBANK in the zone, and handles large amounts of money from Coltan, gold and diamond operations. Thirty-four companies import Coltan from the Congo, among these, 27 are of western origin, mainly Belgium, Dutch and German.

http://golddetecting.4umer.net/t2876-rare-earth-metals-and-ground-noise http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-20545653

A UN report on Rwandan invasion of the Congo, which was supposedly in pursuit of genocidaires, war criminals who had taken refuge in the Congo, found that the Rwandan troops had not headed for the areas where these gangs were hiding out, but for the mines. Far from clearing out the genocidaires the invaders had teamed up with them to exploit those Congolese whom they had not killed and who did not flee. They enslaved local people, often children, to dig at gunpoint for the valuable rare earths.



Others were coming into Congo to get in on the act, the UN report said, "armies of business, commanded by men who carefully planned the redrawing of the regional map to redistribute wealth".
While the UN report recommended further investigation of companies including Barclays and Standard Chartered Banks, Coltam was going up in price as it was used in playstations. Former Labour MP Oona King remarked:
"Kids in Congo were being sent into mines to die so that kids in Europe and Anerica could kill imaginary aliens in their living rooms".
 (Victoria Dove Dimandja, Liberation magazine, January 2011)

. .
Some interesting recent exchanges took place in the House of Lords over Rwanda: For instance:

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead (Labour)
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their assessment of the report of the involvement of the Government of Rwanda in the M23 rebel group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in particular of the involvement of General James Kabarebe, Minister of Defence of Rwanda.

• Hansard source (Citation: HL Deb, 13 November 2012, c286W)

Baroness Warsi (Conservative)

We are aware that the embargoed report by the UN Group of Experts has been leaked. It is not government policy to comment on leaked documents. However, we have consistently made it clear to the Rwandan Government, at the most senior levels, that we find the existing body of evidence for Rwandan involvement with the M23 credible and compelling. And that all such support must stop.

21 Nov 2012 : Column 1802


Lord Alton of Liverpool: Does the noble Baroness not recall that in September, in reply to a Written Question that I tabled, her noble friend Lady Northover confirmed that some £344 million is being provided in bilateral aid to Rwanda between 2011 and 2015? In that same reply, she said that Rwanda,

"must adhere to strict partnership principles",-[Official Report, 24/9/12; col. WA284.]

and that the Secretary of State was still considering whether those expectations were being met. Given what the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, just said about the fall of Goma-there are now 80,000 displaced people and refugees in that area-and what Ban Ki-Moon has said about using aid for leverage, will the Minister say whether we are reconsidering our decision to restore aid in that vast degree to Rwanda and who is arming and paying for the arms of the M23 rebels?
.
Baroness Warsi: I cannot comment on the last question that the noble Lord raised but, in relation to aid, in 2012-13 we have committed £75 million, of which £29 million is general budget support. The noble Lord will be aware that in July of this year, because of certain concerns that were raised, a £16 million tranche of general budget funding was not given over until September and, at that point, £8 million was given over as general budget support but £8 million was redirected to education and food. The next tranche is due in December and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for International Development is looking at all these matters.
Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead: My Lords, does the Minister have a view on how the Security Council could accept yesterday that M23 is getting external support but then perversely claim that it lacks evidence? Does she agree that it need look no further than the new, well documented evidence provided by Human Rights Watch on Rwanda's provision of, for instance, logistical support and sophisticated weaponry to M23?
Baroness Warsi: We were heavily involved in that presidential statement at the United Nations Security Council yesterday. It was important that we raised our concerns, and we raised them. As the noble Baroness will note from that report, the support given to M23 is not entirely clear. Reference was made to it by the United Nations group of experts' report via a leaked report. It would be inappropriate for me to comment on that leak, but these are matters that we continuously discuss with Rwanda.

http://golddetecting.4umer.net/t2876-rare-earth-metals-and-ground-noise http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-20545653

http://bloodinthemobile.org/

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/democraticrepublicofcongo/9700471/Rwandans-fighting-an-illegal-war-in-the-Congo.html

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/93289

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201213/ldhansrd/text/121121-0001.htm

Victoria Dove Dimandja is a Congolese woman living in London and active in the Congolese Women's Group and Campaign "It must stop". See:
http://www.liberationorg.co.uk/

Namibia has a history and a future

TEACHERS' picket in Swakopmund

 BACK in the 1970s I was keenly following news from Namibia, with the rising struggle against South African rule, and in its forefront the South West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO). Neighbouring Angola gained independence in 1975, with the MPLA coming to power, and it looked like Namibia could be next, though it would take time. A woman I knew from activity on Palestine, a member of Socialist Action, became a full-time professional with the Namibian Support Committee some time in the 1980s.  Unfortunately we lost touch.

It was not till much later that I heard , from comrades who had been in contact with left-wing activity here before returning to Namibia, that all was not well with SWAPO,in its leadership's attitude to democratic.rights or in its likely attitude to the workers' movement after independence. I met former SWAPO fighters who had fallen foul of the organisation's Stalinist-trained security apparatus, and spent time in its primitive detention pits.  Fortunately we had gone through enough upheaval on the Left here to realise they deserved an audience. But not everyone wanted to listen.

We also learned a little from the comrades about their people's history, the brutal impact of colonialism, and the memories of heroic struggles in which their grandparents had been involved, and of which we, even those of us with our History A-levels and degrees, knew next to nothing. I am starting to make up some of that gap with a book called "The Kaiser's Holocaust", by David Olusoga and Casper W.Erichsen, which not only describes what people in Namibia were put through but adds a dimension to our understanding of history in Europe. It is sub-titled "Germany's Forgotten Genocide and the Colonial Roots of Nazism".  I would defititely recommend it.   . 

Meanwhile, the class(room) struggle is alive and well in Namibia today, a country that exports uramium and diamonds but apparently can't pay a decent wage to teachers. Here is a report  (extract):


A HUNGRY TEACHER IS AN ANGRY TEACHER

Jade McClune and Otis Finck: The simmering crisis within the teaching profession reached boiling point yesterday when teachers resolved at two separate mass meetings in Walvis Bay and Swakopmund that, star-ting tomorrow morning, they will undertake strike action in solidarity with their colleagues in the Khomas and Hardap regions.

The entire teaching profession in Namibia has been thrown into disarray over the past week as thousands of teachers in the Khomas region went on strike last Friday to demand a 40 percent increase in their wages. Teachers in the Erongo are also no longer prepared to wait in silence and have decided to join their colleagues in the rest of the country, by going on strike tomorrow.

Negotiations over teachers' wages and terms of employment have been dragging on since April and the educators in the Erongo region have held their silence for several months while awaiting the outcome of the closed-door negotiations, but the matter has now spilt over onto the streets. The Erongo Regional Chairperson, Jonathan Tsuseb found himself in a tight corner yesterday when a mass of unhappy teachers confronted him with questions about the state of the salary negotiations during their meeting at Coastal High School in Swakopmund.

“Why can't they give us feedback on the negotiation process? Just wait until 31 October then we will take action,” said one female teacher yesterday. “We are professionals, they must treat us with professionalism,” another remarked. “If you want to strike, you must do it on your own, don't get NANTU involved,” Tsuseb fumed, and went on to say that he is not obliged to address public meetings: “Please don't call me to address public meetings, I am not elected by you!”

“You are a leader of NANTU and we are concerned about what is happening in the teaching fraternity. We are in darkness. We don't know what is going on. We want you to shed light on these issues,” one leading member of the assembled teachers asked, “What happened at the National Teachers Council (NTC) meeting this weekend?” Tsuseb revealed that the entire leadership of the Khomas regional branch of NANTU and the vice-chairperson of the Hardap regional branch were dismissed by the NTC over the weekend for organising the teachers' action, but he said that he could not convey any further information about the content of the negotiations, because of conditions of secrecy.

Tsuseb promised though that the negotiations would be concluded by 1 November and that the teachers would only then be informed of the out-come. “NANTU is negotiating for salary re-grading. There will be an improvement in your salary, but I cannot tell you by how much,” Tsuseb said, “I just don't know.” In mid-September Tsuseb had explained to The Namib Times that formal negotiations had started already on 20 June and that the outstanding issues under negotiation would be concluded by the end of September.

........

Teachers meeting in Narraville yesterday also accused the na-tional leadership of NANTU of negotiating without their informed consent and called on all civil servants to join them in their solidarity action. Teachers are also unhappy about the government's decision to unilaterally increase the cost of their medical aid scheme by 100%, as this was an issue still under negotiation. NANTU had put several options on the table. The first option was for a 10% increase for managers from director's level upwards, as well as a 14% increase for those at the level of school inspectors and downwards.

The second option was for a sliding scale of wages, linked to the rate of inflation, so that teachers' salaries would be automatically adjusted in line with inflation. The third option was for a job evaluation and wholesale regrading of posts. Tsuseb said yesterday that that government has set aside N$1.6 billion for the re-grading, but if the salary re-grading process was not completed by Thurs-day, the teachers could expect an adjustment in line with inflation. It has meanwhile been reported that teachers in the Otjozondjupa and Hardap regions have already forwarded petitions outlining their demands to the union leadership and that teachers in the Hardap Region are also demanding salary increases of be-tween 20% and 40%, as well as tax concessions to reduce the tax burden on teachers.

Teachers in the Khomas Region are demanding that their pensions not be taxed and are calling for their transport allowances to be in-creased from N$520 to N$1 000 per month. Teachers in the Hardap region are also adamant that if their demands are not met by October 31, they would resort to strike action. The Swakopmund group of concerned teachers expressed support yesterday for the demand for a 40% wage increase as a starting-point for further negotiations and are also demanding N$2000 housing allowance, an increase in their transport allowance and that their annual bonus cheque should not be taxed.

The teachers who assembled at Coastal High yesterday said that they are prepared to lay down their tools, but noted that it would be unprofessional to go on strike immediately.

“Therefore, as concerned teachers, we will go to school tomorrow (Tuesday) and let all the parents and teachers know of our decision. We must let them know that if they send their kids to school on Wednesday there will be nobody to take care of them. We will march to NANTU offices on Wednesday morning and from there will take further action,” the meeting agreed. The aggrieved teachers will meet again at Coastal High School in Swakopmund at 14:00 today to decide on the way forward.

In Walvis Bay about two hundred teachers also attended an urgent meeting to obtain teachers views and discuss concerns pertaining to delayed salary negations and information being withheld in this regard at Narraville Primary School. Those in attendance expressed solidarity and called for a unified approach with the teachers on strike in the Khomas region. They expressed support for their striking colleagues and resolved to join them by drawing up a petition in support of the demands from the teachers of the Khomas region and by going slow.

(full report see: http://www.namibtimes.net/News%20Items/a_hungry_teacher_is_an_angry_tea.htm 

Honour the Victims, Not the Criminal

1. 

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   
   Above:  RALLY in Affile to oppose Graziani mausoleum and park, photo by Claudio Proietti.
   Below: GRAZIANI  (second from right) with Himmler (fourth from right), Heydrich (second from left) and other Nazis and fascists at the funeral of  police chief Bocchini, Rome, November 21, 1940,.
   
   
   
   UEFA is due to decide next month what to do about racist chants by fans of Rome club Lazio at their match with Spurs. Such behaviour by Lazio fans is nothing new. The Italian club has long had organised fascist gangs on its terraces, and former star player Paolo de Canio who made his name with his fascist salutes was a member of one of them.
   
   "I'm not a racist, I'm a fascist", Di Canio insisted a few years ago. He declared his admiration for Mussolini who had been "much misunderstood".  So far as I know his politics have not changed since he came into British football, which to a non-fan like me puts the fuss over what someone may have said in a heated exchange on the pitch into a curious context. Still, who knows, if the Swindon Town manager keeps upsetting people the way he did some of his own club's fans, he might end up doing some ankle stretching exercises just like his deeply misunderstood hero.  
   
   Lazio takes its name from the province around Rome, and that's where, about 50 km from the capital, there's a town called Affile where some people have found another way of saluting fascism.
    
   A mausoleum and park, dedicated to the memory of Fascist Field Marshall Rodolfo Graziani, has recently been opened in Affile, at a cost of €127,000 to local taxpayers. The mayor Ercole Viri has expressed hope that the site will become as ‘famous and as popular as Predappio’ – the burial place of Mussolini which has become a shrine to neo-Fascists.
   
   Graziani was Mussolini’s commander in colonial wars in Ethiopia and Libya where he carried out massacres and used chemical weapons against the native populations. In Libya in the 1920s he became known as ‘the Butcher of Fezzan’. He was directly responsible for suppressing the Senussi uprisings, and for the construction of concentration and labour camps. He was also directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Libyans including Omar Mukhtar in eastern Libya.
   
   From 1935 to 1936, Graziani conducted the invasion of Ethiopia before becoming viceroy of Italian East Africa and governor-general of Addis Ababa in 1937. In an attempt to consolidate Italian control over the country, Graziani’s occupation army murdered up to 30,000 civilians in just three days in February 1937. Eyewitness accounts tell of how Italian soldiers doused houses with petrol and set fire to them.
   
   In the same month, Graziani ordered the massacre of the monks and pilgrims at the ancient monastery of Debre Libanos. In May, he was responsible for the assassination of up to 3,000 Ethiopian intellectuals. For these actions, Graziani earned his second title: ‘the Butcher of Ethiopia’.
   
   As Mussolini’s minister of defence in 1943, Graziani was responsible for putting down dissent in the Nazis’ puppet Salo republic, drafting a decree, which threatened any Italian who refused to serve in the army with execution. Many were killed as a result.
   
   In 1943, Gollancz published a book called The Trial of Mussolini, which pretended to be a verbatim report of the Italian dictator's trial - which never came - and featured a number of prominent British politicians and newspaper owners like Lord Rothermere of the Daily Mail, whom Musso was able to call as character witnesses for his defence, quoting things they had said in his support before the war. It was written by "Cassius" - a pen name used by Michael Foot.
   
   
   But Mussolini never faced such a trial, and nor did Graziani - even though he was among eight Italians against whom the UN War Crimes Commission agreed there was a prima facie case. We are bound to wonder whether Libyans and Ethiopians were seen as lesser breeds, against whom crimes could not only be forgiven, but forgotten. That is what people in these African countries  who know thier history may well suspect.  
   
   In 1950, an Italian military tribunal condemned Graziani to 19 years for collaborating with Nazis. He served only four months. He was never prosecuted for specific war crimes. In the 1950s until his death, he was the head of the neo-Fascist Italian Social Movement party, the MSI.  In the years of the Cold War when the NATO allies feared that Italy, with its strong Communist Party and unions might prove a weak link, they were inclined to see the fascists, including their terrorist wing, as a possible asset.  
   
   Nowadays, when Italy's far Right appears as arrogant and violent as ever, celebrating a fascist war criminal as a national hero is bound to give them a shrine to rally around, and encourage their actions. It is not just an insult to past victims but a threat to others roday.
   
   Fortunately, in Italy and other countries a campaign is under way to oppose the Affile mausoleum and say that Graziani and other leading fascists ought not to be honoured. There have been demonstrations in Affile itself and at Italian embassies in London and elsewhere. A petition circulating online says:
   .
   

   We, the undersigned, condemn unequivocally this atrocious use of public money to celebrate a war criminal and a Nazi collaborator.
   Furthermore, we call upon the European Union and our own governments to use current European and international legislation to:
   (1) Demand that the Italian government and the Mayor of Affile issue an apology for allowing the memory of Graziani’s victims to be desecrated in this way
   (2) Demand that the Italian government and the Mayor of Affile remove all allusions to Graziani, both direct and indirect, from the memorial
   (3) Demand that the Italian government and the Mayor of Affile dedicate the memorial to all those in Italy and around the world who gave their lives in the struggle against Fascism
   (4) Demand that the Italian government and the Mayor of Affile install a specific memorial at the site which commemorates those Africans who died resisting Italian occupation of their countries

   
    There is a Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/Neverforgetcampaign
   
   And a website: www.neverforgetcampaign.wordpress.com
   
   
   

   On SS Lazio and di Canio:
   
   http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/19669979

   http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1506262/Im-a-fascist-not-a-racist-says-Paolo-di-Canio.html
   
   

   
   

   On "The Trial of Mussolini":
   http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2194&dat=19431029&id=0fIuAAAAIBAJ&sjid=A9wFAAAAIBAJ&pg=6320,5299772

Marikana Manifesto

AT the TUC in Brighton two weeks ago a resolution was adopted condemning the shooting of miners by police and at the same time, reaffirming support for the South African NUM and COSATU. I was not surprised. I think delegates were relieved that the obscene charging of surviving strikers with the death of their colleagues had been dropped, and that they could condemn the shootings without having to face the capitalist character of the South African government or examine the relations with it and the mine companies of union leaders and political leaderships we had supported.

 I say "we", remembering the night we rounded off a branch meeting by going round the corner to a party at the ANC offices; the funds raised for elections, and the hostility which met those of us on the Left who sought a hearing for dissident African freedom fighters and socialist trade unionists.

Things have changed, and are changing, both in South Africa and here. A while ago I was in a jampacked meeting to hear two youth and community activists whose tactics in the cities could probably teach us a few tricks.

 But the old residue remains, and at my union delegation's meeting before the Brighton congress began one brother warned us of "dark forces"(!) at work in South Africa, trying to undermine the relationship between the South African Communist Party and the ANC. I don't think he quite got the terrified response he might have hoped for,(some people previously quite close to the SACP seem ready to end that relationship). But he was sincere, and I am sure he and others will be shocked and horrified to see the declaration below which has been forwarded to us by some South African comrades:

MINEWORKERS DECLARATION 19th September 2012 Marikana

We, the striking mineworkers, delegates from various Platinum, gold and other mines and mineworker communities, gathered here today, declare the following:
1. We stand in solidarity with the mineworkers, ex-mineworkers and their families in the rest of South Africa, Swaziland, Lesotho, in Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia, Malawi, DRC, Angola, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Kenya, in West Africa, in Chile, in China, in India, in Italy, Spain and the rest of the world;

 2. We remember the hundreds of thousands of mineworkers who have died on the mines all over the world; we remember those who have died because of mine sickness such as silicosis. We remember all who face a daily death who still work in the mines. The capitalist mine owners become rich at our expense.

 3. We remember the dead, the injured, shot down by the police on the 16th August 2012

4. The ANC government is not our government; it is the government of the mining bosses, of the capitalists. This is the same in every country in the world- the government is the government of the rich.

 5. The police are not there to protect us and our families but to keep us as slaves to the mining bosses and their cruel system of exploitation.

 6. Our children have no future, we live shacks, the water is polluted, sewage runs in the streets, the few who work earn slave wages, because the mine bosses steal trillions of Rands and dollars worth of wealth from South Africa and the rest of Africa, every year. The migrant labour system is still there, it is just run by new bossboys, the ANC government;

7. The mines, factories and commercial farms should therefore be taken over, without compensation to the capitalists, and run by the workers,

 8. Parliament is a talkshop, covering the dictatorship of the owners of the mines and the international banks; the government and parliament are their local managers;

9. Black Economic Empowerment or Indigenization is a tool to by the international mining bosses and banks to bribe a section of the local middle class to manage this slavery system for them;

 10. No worker representative or official should get more than the average wage that skilled workers have achieved; all representatives and officials must be subject to instant recall by the workers;

11. The striking mineworkers general meetings will decide as a collective when the strike is stopped, suspended or when we take a step forward or a temporary step back;

 12. We stand in solidarity with the striking mineworkers at KDC Goldfields and any other mine that is on strike; we warn the bosses to meet their demands or face a full scale general strike on the mines; we call for a war committee of workers delegates from all mines to be strengthened and to continue to co-ordinate our struggles;

 13. We stand in solidarity with the striking coal mine workers in Italy and Spain

 14. We thank all the working class and activists around the world who came out in protest in support of us- you have shown the real meaning of ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’.

 15. We call for all workers to immediately remove all their shopstewards and leaders who sides with the ANC government and the bosses. Workers’ take control of your unions

16. At the same time we also call on all workplaces and working class communities to elect worker’s representatives, irrespective if they are in a union or not, permanent or casual, local or immigrant and in the community, the delegates should include the youth and unemployed. All representatives should be subject to instant recall by the constituency that elected them.

Our demands remain: • The families of the workers massacred by the police and the mine bosses must receive the wage and full benefits of that worker, as if he was alive; • A minimum of R12500 for all mineworkers in Africa. Workers are free to fight for more, such as R16070. All wages must rise when prices rise and not be bound by any agreement to wait for a year or years. • Arrest the police and their commanders who perpetrated the massacre. • Arrest the Lonmin bosses for their complicity in the Marikana massacre • An end to stealing by the mine bosses through transfer pricing; bring back the wealth that the mine bosses have stolen- here are the funds for jobs for all at a living wage, decent houses and services for all, free, quality health care for all, for free, liberatory education for all; equal pay for equal work- an end to casualization and labour broking. • Arrest all the mine bosses for theft .Stop the plunder of the wealth in Africa by Anglo American and other imperialist monopolies • Nationalize all the land, mines, banks, commercial farms, Sasol, Petro-SA, without compensation to the capitalists, place these under workers’ control. This creates the basis for sharing all work among all who can work, for ending all unemployment and low wages, for disbanding the ghettoes and building integrated decent housing and service for all, for free, quality health care for all, for free, liberatory education for all. • Disband the police and the army; for the general arming of the masses

The above programme sets the basis for the setting up of a working class party, that unites the working class fighters in South Africa, Southern Africa, Africa and around the globe. It is this new party that will lead the struggle for working class power and a Socialist workers’ state, indeed a federation of Southern African Socialist states and a Socialist Africa. The pace at which the workers’ states are integrated to become a unity will be determined by the respective working classes themselves, although we realize that the Anglo American and other mining monopolies keep us divided in different slave camps but for their sole benefit. No struggle for workers’ power in Africa can succeed if the workers in the USA, Britain, France, Germany, Japan and in other countries do not also embark on the struggle for working class power on their own home soil.

 Our mothers were kitchen slaves, our fathers were mineworkers, we want the current and future generations to be free. That is why we are Socialist; that is why we are Communist; that is why we are Trotskyist.

 I don't know the precise provenance of this document, whether it was produced entirely from the miners' own discussion, or penned by political activists and submitted for their approval. But whatever the influence at work it certainly does not read like something the companies or right-wing forces would provide, if they were secretly backing the strikers' union just to split the movement, as some people have suggested. This is not the language of the UDM or other right-wing unions that we know!

 As for that last paragraph about "our mothers" being kitchen slaves and so on, as our comrade in South Africa explains that poetic language is authentic:
"In the marches here, people sing: my mother was a kitchen girl, my father was a garden boy, that's why, that's why I'm a Socialist, that's why I'm a Communist'. maybe you don't know this song. At the parliament march, workers adapted the song to - my mother was a kitchen girl, my father was a mineworker, that is why I'm a Socialist, that's why I'm a Communist'- things just spring up in struggle".

Rachel and the Miners

"Only thing missing is Cat(erpillar) logo on the dozer". Otherwise, Carlos Latuff's cartoon sums up how judgment is widely seen.

ISRAEL and South Africa are supposed to be opponents.Leaders who claim credit for triumphing over Apartheid have rightly taken stands against what some - including some Israelis -dub "Apartheid Israel". But this week, for all their differences, South Africa and Israel appeared less like principled opponents, more like competitors in injustice.

Nine years after the death of American human rights activist Rachel Corrie, who stood in the path of an Israeli bulldozer in the southern Gaza Strip, an Israeli judge has delivered his considered verdict that the young American was responsible for her own death.

In South Africa, even before an inquiry set up by President Jacob Zuma had met to commence its work, the 270 miners arrested during the strike at the Marikana platinum mine have been charged with the murder of 34 colleagues who were shot dead by police.

The murder charge – and associated charges for the attempted murder of 78 miners injured at the Marikana mine near Johannesburg – was brought by the national prosecuting authority under an obscure Roman-Dutch common law previously used by the Apartheid regimr. .

The move came as the men appeared in court charged with public violence over the clashes at the Lonmin platinum mine on 16 August.

According to a police spokesperson the officers who opened fire were defending themselves after coming under fire themselves from a charging mob, who were armed and had already killed two officers and some strikebreakers earlier that week. But on TV we clearly saw police standing and firing automatic weapons, not attempting to take cover, while the crowd supposely advancing on them could not be seen.

In fact, post-mortem examinations revealed that most of the 34 victims of the police action on August 16 were shot in the back while a smaller number were shot while facing forward, Johannesburg's Star newspaper reported citing sources close to the investigation.

Over 150 complaints have been filed with the Independent Police Investigative Directorate over the alleged torture and assault in police custody of miners who were arrested following the violence.

Rachel Corrie was killed on March 16, 2003, in an area where Israeli forces were clearing a widening corridor between Palestinian homes and the Egyptian border, so their patrols could operate without interference. Earlier in the week she and other ISM volunteers had tried to shield Palestinian workers who were trying to repair a well. On the day she was killed the Israeli bulldozers were advancing on homes and vegetable gardens, destroying glasshouses.

The Israeki military said the bulldozer which killed Rachel Corrie was only clearing "vegetation and rubble", and that the driver, with limited visibility through a narrow armoured window could not see her over the pile of earth in front of his blade.

Eye-witness Joe Carr, another of the volunteers, described it differently:

"Still wearing her fluorescent jacket, she knelt down at least 15 meters in front of the bulldozer, and began waving her arms and shouting, just as activists had successfully done dozens of times that day.... When it got so close that it was moving the earth beneath her, she climbed onto the pile of rubble being pushed by the bulldozer.... Her head and upper torso were above the bulldozer's blade, and the bulldozer operator and co-operator could clearly see her. Despite this, the operator continued forward, which caused her to fall back, out of view of the driver. [sic] He continued forward, and she tried to scoot back, but was quickly pulled underneath the bulldozer. We ran towards him, and waved our arms and shouted; one activist with the megaphone. But the bulldozer operator continued forward, until Rachel was all the way underneath the central section of the bulldozer".

The driver said that if he had to do it again he would.

Nine Palestinians were killed that week. Because Rachel was an American, US officials said there should be a full inquiry, and Rachel's parents sought legal action.

Nine years later, Judge Oded Gershon of the Haifa District Court has produced a 162 page report from which my friend and fellow-blogger Adam Keller quotes a sample:

"The Philadelphi Route was the arena of constant war, of ongoing sniper fire, rocket fire and explosive charges. None other than combat soldiers ventured there... The bulldozer crew was conducting a clearing operation under fire. The late Rachel Corrie chose to take a risk, which ultimately led to her death... The deceased had gotten herself into a dangerous situation... She did not stay away, as any sensible person would have done. The deceased's death was caused by an accident which the deceased brought on herself, despite the attempts of the IDF troops to remove her and her friends from there... Under the circumstances, the IDF unit's conduct was impeccable."

Adam himself served in the IDF (and spent some time in the stockade after tanks he was guarding were mysteriously daubed overnight with the words "Down With the Occupation!"). He acknowledges that the corridor where Rachel Corrie was killed was indeed a battle zone, where Palestinians had vented their rage at Israeli forces maintaining the siege of Gaza, and men were killed on both sides.

'

'Still, Judge Gershon was certainly not accurate when he wrote that combat soldiers were the only people there, in the hell of the battlefield called The Philadelphi Route. Very many, civilians were there, too - men and women, elderly and children – in their thousands and tens of thousands. The civilians were there because it was their home, the only home they had - even if it was quite miserable. They had lived there before it became the scene of battle and before it came to be called Philadelphi. Many of them had come to live there because their original homes had become a battle zone in a previous war, the one which convulsed this country in 1948. And they stayed there, even when it had become the Philadelphi battle zone and the Philadelphi corridor became an arena of battle, even when some them got killed by the bullets of snipers and the explosion of explosive devices, because they literally had nowhere else to go.

'And then somebody conceived a brilliant idea. The man's name was Yom Tov Samia, and he was an outstanding officer in the Israel Defense Forces who climbed fast through the ranks until he became Commanding General South. And General Samia had an idea how to win the lost war along the Route. To take up "clearing" - a word invented by the Israel Defense Forces, the kind of word which armies make up to hide horrors behind neutral words - on a truly grand scale. To create a "sterile" space, completely sterile and without life, a kilometer or two wide. A completely flattened area with no houses and no people and no animals and no plants, nothing but soldiers and weapons of war moving in safety, as they could notice from far any possible threat and take action to neutralize that threat. In purely military terms, it must be said, there was some logic to this idea. Only, it implied the destruction of thousands of houses in which tens of thousands of people lived, half or three quarters of a city called Rafah.

'Probably General Yom Tov Samia would have liked to do it all at once, in one blow, to erase "shave off" all these thousands of houses in a single day and by the next complete the sterilization of the area. But this might have caused a bit too much of an international stir, become an instant item of "Breaking News" on CNN and other networks, and the political echelon did not give its approval. So the Caterpillar D-9 bulldozers were set to working by the good old method of creating "facts on the ground" bit by bit, acre by acre. Each time they erased and "shaved off" another row of houses, sometimes twenty, sometimes thirty. Usually the residents of these houses managed to jump out and run at the last minute, but some were not quick enough and were buried under the ruins of what had been their homes. In the city of Rafah, photos of those victims were printed and pasted on the walls, but media outlets in the wider world were not really interested.

'That was the time when volunteers started arriving on the scene, the people of the International Solidarity Movement, ISM. Yes, that organization to which Judge Gershon paid much attention in his verdict, stating that it was "abusing the discourse of Human Rights and morality" and that its acts are "violent in essence". Activists from Europe and America and all over the world came to the Gaza Strip and asked where Palestinians were most suffering from the occupation's harshness and were in greatest need of assistance and international solidarity. And they were told that Rafah was such a place. And they came to Rafah and were hosted by families on the very front line, where their hosts already knew that they were next in line for the D-9's.

'And there were activists who after months in besieged Rafah went to rest and freshen up in their own quiet and safe homes at Copenhagen or Barcelona or Sydney - or Olympia in the State of Washington in the United States - and when they returned to Rafah they found that the house where they had stayed the last time no longer existed, not a trace of it left, and the plot on which it had stood had become part of the sterile space. Another house, which had been further back, was now the new front line.

And then they decided to do what a person who cares, who cares very very much, could to do in such a situation. To go unarmed into the battlefield and arena of war called the Philadelphi Route. To stand with empty hands against tanks and bulldozers, and to scream and cry out towards those who did not really want to hear. To face empty-handed and unarmed the might of the Israel Defense Forces. To interpose with their bodies and interfere with implementation of the brilliant strategic plan of General Yom Tov Samia.

Maybe there is something in what Judge Oded Gershon wrote. A sensible person – the kind of sensible person which Judge Gershon himself is, and his friends and acquaintances - would not have done it. Judge Oded Gershon would certainly not have seriously considered facing with his bare hands a giant bulldozer, nearly as big as a house. "The deceased had knowingly gotten herself into a dangerous situation." There is no doubt that she did. A very dangerous situation. Jewish and world history marks a young boy named David, who knowingly placed himself in a very dangerous situation, facing a fearsome giant called Goliath. It might be that he was not a very sensible person, either.

'"The bulldozer driver and his commander had a very limited field of view. They could not notice the deceased" wrote Judge Gershon. One might add that also the commander of the commander had a very limited field of view, and even the commander of the commander of the commander. A very limited field of view, in which only the immediate military considerations and objectives could be seen. A very limited field of view in which human beings could not be seen, a living city could not been as it was being destroyed and razed and erazed and made into a sterile zone. A very limited field of view where it was not possible to see a young woman who followed the dicates of her conscience and came all the way from the West Coast of the United States to Rafah in the Gaza Strip, to risk her life in a desperate act of protest.

'At the exit from the Haifa District Court, Cindy Corrie, Rachel's mother, spoke to the journalists. Hurt and shaken by the verdict she said "In that home which Rachel was trying to protect there were children. All of us should have been there, to stand with her."'

http://adam-keller2.blogspot.co.il/2012/08/empty-handed-in-battlefield.html

But from Rachel Corrie, apparently responsible for her own death because, being a member of the ISM, whose actions though unarmed were "violent in essence", she chose to place herself in the wromg place and in the path of a bulldozer, we now move on to the higher case; of the striking miners who were guilty of charging away from the police, and placing their backs in the path of gunfire.

"The law is an ass", said Mr.Bumble. But in some cases, of the two, the ass is a much more worthy beast.